Wes Welker’s Suspension Gives Broncos One More Dose of Uncertainty

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Football coaches tend to be fluent in John Wayne-ese. So Colts Coach Chuck Pagano got on a call with reporters on Wednesday and described Denver quarterback Peyton Manning as a “man’s man.”

As for Wes Welker, the Broncos’ flyweight former All-Pro receiver?

“He’s a nightmare,” Pagano said, his voice thick with admiration. “He’s tough as damn nails and all the respect in the world for him.”

The Colts face the Broncos on Sunday, so perhaps Pagano was being macho kind. Broncos Coach John Fox faced the more pointed question:

Coach, you surprised that your concussion-buffeted star receiver, Wes Welker, will be suspended for four weeks for taking performance-enhancing drugs?

Fox is a ruddy and manly sort. He shrugged and wagged his head this way and that, just for a second calling to mind Stevie Wonder.

“If you do this long enough, you are surprised, but not totally,” he said. “It is disappointing, but that is life in the N.F.L.”

This is true. A football star’s brain gets rattled like a pinball, and coaches talk of their confidence that the addled star will get back onto the field as soon as he can spell his first and last names. The league’s drug-testing program is an opaque wonder. No one can say who was tested for what or when or the identity of the substance that resulted in the positive test.

“We don’t get into the business of denying or confirming the type of violation,” an N.F.L. spokesman said.

Suspensions and leaves — for injuries and concussions, and drugs, D.U.I., domestic assaults, and weapons possession — begin and end throughout the N.F.L. season.

Football players tend to take such uncertainty in stride. Most of their contracts can be torn up as quickly as their ligaments snap. Over and over, the Broncos referred to themselves as a band of brothers.

“He’s a leader,” tight end Julius Thomas said of Welker, who gave an inspirational speech to teammates before departing the premises on Wednesday. “He means a lot to us.”

It was as if Welker had taken a four-week valor break. Then Manning walked up and cut to the chase:

“It’s the third year running we’ve had a starting player suspended to start the season,” he told reporters. “I don’t think that’s something the Broncos want to boast about, but it’s the reality.”

Welker’s explanation for his positive test result took out a large advance on his credibility account. He told The Denver Post that someone may have popped something into his drink at the Kentucky Derby. I hate when that happens.

This said, I have a hard time getting too worked up about his suspension.

You watch these very large, jacked men move about at explosive speeds on the team’s practice field in the prairie south of Denver. (With its walled field, security gates and three towers, it resembles an especially plush state penitentiary.) You hear the daily medical reports and keep in mind that the average N.F.L. career lasts three years. It might strike you as almost sensible that an aging, 5-foot-9 receiver might pop a little something to keep his eyes extra wide open as he makes a cut across a midfield filled with behemoths.

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Welker being hit by the Texans’ D. J. Swearinger on Aug. 23, the play that caused Welker’s latest concussion.CreditJack Dempsey/Associated Press

In late August, Welker took such a cut and a Houston Texan defender took a running start and put a shoulder pad to his head, which snapped to the side. It is not advisable for the skull to move this way.

Welker left the field with his third concussion in 10 months.

Three days later, officials assured everyone that he’d be back soon. Coach Fox played fearless forecaster. “He’s feeling good ... he’ll be out there when he’s healthy.”

All N.F.L. coaches talk like this; there’s no percentage in getting too introspective about a sport this violent.

Manning is out there playing with a surgically repaired neck; you suck in your breath every time a 300-pound man who can run the 40-yard dash in less than five seconds puts his shoulder pads into the quarterback.

Danger haunts other sports, too. Almost one-quarter of the men and women who clamber to the top of K-2, that Himalayan peak, die. Those odds strike me as more miserable than running a crossing route in the N.F.L.

I called Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, the director of the University of Michigan NeuroSport program who consults with the N.H.L. and the Michigan football team. He emphasized that for all the horror stories about former players, the data shows that about 94 percent of football players will not suffer serious brain deterioration. That is compared to 98 percent of non-football playing Americans.

Veteran players, he said, likely are better able to withstand hits. Those who cannot absorb blows tend to get bad concussions in high school and leave the sport.

This field of data exists with others. A new study came earlier this year found that the brains of college football players differ subtly from those of other students, especially if players experienced a past concussion.

Tuesday night I called Ben Utecht. He was a tight end with the Indianapolis Colts, and collected a Super Bowl ring. He sustained five concussions, the last so severe that he was out cold for 90 seconds. At age 33, he has memory loss. A singer, he tapes lyrics to the floor because he cannot remember the words.

What, I ask, would you say to Welker?

“If he was my teammate and brother, I’d say: ‘Wes, man, if I’m going to talk to you when you’re 60 years old, I want you to recognize me. Nothing is more important than your brain.’ ”

Kutcher said it was unlikely Welker would end up disabled. But he might not walk healthy into retirement.

“There’s also living with headaches and feeling lousy as you get older,” Kutcher said. “That’s another conversation.”

Which brings us back to the dice roll.

Coach Fox suggested that Welker’s drug suspension was just as well. “Sometimes these things are blessings in disguise,” Fox said. “The extra four weeks will give him plenty of time to heal.”

Doesn’t that, I asked, suggest that Welker was taking a big risk in planning to return this weekend? Should the team help this brave player decide his career is at an end?

“That’s pure speculation,” Fox said. “I can’t get into that. We’ll see in four weeks.”

At which time Welker will resume those daring and dangerous cutting routes of his.

Correction:

The Sports of The Times column on Thursday, about the suspension of Denver Broncos receiver Wes Welker, carried an erroneous dateline in some copies. The article was reported and written in Englewood, Colo., not Ellington.

Email: powellm@nytimes.com

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